Urine Culture

Item

Value

Approval req'd?

No

Available Stat?

No

Utilization Guidelines

Order Urinalysis (with urine culture if UA shows pyuria) for most patients. The urine sample will be analyzed by urinalysis and set up for urine culture only if WBC > 4. Order Urine Culture with option for urinalysis restricted to high risk populations for patients meeting the following exception criteria:

Pregnant women
Positive point of care urinalysis
Children < 24 months of age
Neutropenic with ANC < 500 or anticipated to drop to < 500 in 24 hours
Renal transplant within 3 months or needing augmented immunosuppression
Inability to have inflammatory response in urinary tract due to immunocompromised state
Patients undergoing urologic procedures in which mucosal bleeding is expected
Suspected complete urinary tract obstruction
Urine collected surgically

Stat Gram Stain can be performed for urines collected surgically as indicated by the order.

Test code

P059

Test group

Bacterial Culture

Performed by

Microbiology

In House Availability

Set up daily, day and evening shifts

Method

Aerobic culture

Collection Instructions

Submit voided urine in a cup with a screw-on lid. Use a Red top vacutainer to collect the specimen from a bladder catheter. Urines collected surgically can have stat Gram Stain performed as indicated by the order. The physician can notify the laboratory to decline organism identification and susceptibility testing. See Utilization Guidelines below for ordering instructions.

Container type

Urine cup (clean catch)
Red top (indwelling catheter)

Amount to Collect

See preferred volume

Sample type

Random urine

Preferred volume

10 mL urine

UCSF Rejection Criteria

More than one midstream or indwelling cath urine in 48 hours

Normal range

Stability

Refrigerated 24 hours

Reflex?

If bacteria are detected that are not normal mixed flora they are automatically identified and susceptibility testing is performed.

Full ID and/or susceptibility testing may be omitted upon request when sample is submitted for testing.

Additional information

Colony counts on urine cultures with growth are reported as follows:

1,000 CFU/mL
10,000 CFU/mL
100,000 CFU/mL
≥1,000,000 CFU/mL

Based on the use of a calibrated 10 µl loop used to inoculate plates, each resultant colony represents approximately 100 CFU/mL. Therefor an estimated colony count of 500 = 50,000 CFU/mL. Counts exceeding the above reporting levels are rounded up to the next level.

It is important to note that the enumeration of colonies is only an estimate, particularly when the number of colonies on the plate exceeds 100 (10,000 CFU/mL).